“Stanley InnerSpace is a long-established business with a strong brand presence,” says Solaire Medical President Ben Barber. “Combining the brand recognition of InnerSpace with the innovative, best-in-class design of Solaire Medical products brought us to a redesigned new product line that we call InnerSpace by Solaire Medical.”

The InnerSpace by Solaire Medical portfolio reflects not only innovations introduced through InnerSpace, but also new innovations in materials and manufacturing processes introduced by Solaire Medical. The result is a high-quality, highly flexible medical storage product portfolio.

Solaire Medical and the InnerSpace portfolio will be supported through the combined energy and expertise of the two companies and a robust team of salespeople, storage consultants and service representatives. The Solaire Medical team has increased by 50 employees. All are dedicated to creating value for customers by improving the organization of medical equipment and supplies as well as the efficiency of staff.

“The acquisition brings the expertise and resources of design, manufacturing, customer service and sales into one organization,” says Solaire Medical President Ben Barber. “Our customers will benefit from high-quality products, improved service, reduced lead times and the support of long-held knowledge from leaders in the medical storage business.

“We look forward to growing our business and our product offering.”

Model of patient's left atrial appendage (LAA) created with Stratasys and Materialise technology is intended to allow surgeons to select the appropriate device and plan the optimal approach to occlude the LAA.Image provided by Materialise

3D printed medical models come to life

Stratasys PolyJet technology and Materialise FDA-cleared software offers a versatile 3D printing system to build anatomical models at the point-of-care.

Minneapolis & Rehovot, Israel – Further bringing 3D printed medical models to life, Stratasys is expanding the suite of printers and materials validated by its collaborator Materialise as part of FDA-cleared Materialise Mimics inPrint software. The end result is a versatile 3D printing system for point-of-care across hospitals and physicians – advancing production of patient-specific, life-like anatomical models for diagnostic purposes in conjunction with other tools and expert clinical judgement.

PolyJet multi-material and multi-color solutions validated now include the J750 and J735 3D Printers and the high-performance desktop Objet30 Prime 3D Printer. Materialise Mimics inPrint is the first and currently only 3D printing software cleared by the FDA to create anatomical models for patient care. The software is designed to allow physicians and hospitals to leverage 3D printing at point-of-care – building a trusted and reliable source for surgical planning and interdisciplinary communication.

“Historically, pre-surgical planning relied on 2D imaging requiring physicians to mentally reconstruct the patient anatomy. But 3D printing evolves this approach by putting precise replicas of patient anatomy directly in physician hands. Our collaboration with Materialise is a huge step towards unlocking the potential of this technology for patient care,” says Eyal Miller, head of Healthcare Business Unit, Stratasys. “Now the 3D printer that every hospital needs to power their medical modeling comes with additional options for an FDA-cleared software solution.”

“By validating Stratasys’ 3D printing technologies through our certification process, we’re giving doctors and hospitals improved access to high-quality anatomical models for personalized care to patients,” notes Bryan Crutchfield, vice president and general manager of Materialise North America. “The addition of multi-color and multi-material printers to the list of validated printers is aimed to enable healthcare providers to implement a versatile offering that can support their most complex cases across a wide range of surgical specialties on a single printer. At Materialise, we take a hardware-agnostic approach to software development, offering the flexibility to partner with other leaders in the 3D printing industry like Stratasys – a company committed to addressing requirements of the medical community.”

The Stratasys J735/J750 3D Printers are able to develop highly-complex models using multiple textures, while combining hard and soft materials to mimic human tissue. The unique combination of transparency with multiple color re-creation ensures practitioners can differentiate anatomy, view critical structures within an organ replica, and create realistic representations of any bone, tissue, and organ.

The Stratasys’ Objet30 Prime 3D Printer is a cost-effective, desktop platform providing an entry point to hospitals seeking a point-of-care printing solution – without compromising quality, resolution, or accuracy. The versatile offering supports a range of anatomical models and applications, including orthopedic, cardiac, neurosurgery and other use-cases for visualization, surgical planning, training, and education.

Photo courtesy of Festo

Manufacturing, life sciences at Festo Technology Engineering Center

Festo technologists are developing a new class of fluid handling systems for increasing the speed, accuracy of automated screening, sequencing machines.

Festorecently dedicated the company’s new Technology Engineering Center (TEC), located just north of Boston. TEC is the company’s first engineering center in the United States devoted to the life sciences.

The choice of the United States for this engineering center was based on this country’s leadership in the global life sciences industry. Locating the researchers and developers in greater Boston was due to the proximity of the area’s research institutions such as MIT, Harvard, and Brown, the confluence of laboratory equipment manufacturers, and the pool of qualified technologists.

The goal of TEC Boston is two-fold:

Pioneer the development of new high speed, high accuracy fluid handling products based on pneumatic principles

Work with individual customers on automated motion and fluid handling solutions that help bring their laboratory equipment to market faster and at less cost.

Increasing the speed and accuracy of screening and sequencing is essential to lowering health care costs

In an automated screening or sequencing machine, small amounts of fluid-based samples are dispensed into shallow wells on what are called in the life sciences microplates. As the number of wells on each microplate has climbed, the amount of fluid in the sample has decreased. This means that the physics of dispensing small sample amounts at ever higher rates has neared its limits.

The Festo team is developing a new approach to fluid dispensing that is based on fast acting valves and pneumatic pressure in addition to using micro-pumping technology. Utilizing pneumatic control and the latest Festo motion technology can, at a minimum, lower subsystem costs and, at a maximum, begin to exceed current speed, volume, and accuracy norms.

Speed and accuracy goals for fluid dispensingThe initial target for the first new Festo products has been the development of pneumatic systems to fill 384 well plates within 15 seconds, handling fluid volumes between 500nL to 5μl. Current systems achieve a coefficient of variation (CV), also known as relative standard deviation (RSD), of less than 2% in a wide variety of applications. A benefit of working with Festo is that equipment manufacturers have a single supplier for an integrated motion and fluid dispensing system.

“For the past year, we’ve been equipping the engineering center in Billerica and hiring and training our team,” notes Dr. Frank Jacob, Head of the Project Unit Medical Devices & Laboratory Automation at Festo. “Festo is combining its latest motion automation used in the manufacturing and processing industries with expertise in pneumatics to create new systems that contribute to lower costs by increasing laboratory output. This technology also enables Festo customers to improve time to market and lower engineering expenditures.”

Festo has been developing components and system solutions for equipment manufacturers specializing in the automation of laboratory processes and the manufacture of medical devices since 2004. Due to double-digit growth, this business area was made a separate division at Festo in 2015. Wolfgang Trautwein, Manager Business Development LifeTech at Festo, will spend extended periods of time in the U.S. during 2019, acting as the company’s ambassador to universities and equipment manufacturers.

Prospect Heights, Illinois-based Heimatec Inc., a supplier of live tooling for the North American machine tool industry, has become part of a new corporation, Platinum Tooling Technologies Inc. The announcement was made by the longtime president of Heimatec, Preben Hansen, who will lead the new company as its president and COO, holding a majority stake in its ownership. Hansen is a 30-year veteran and recognized authority in the machine tool industry for tooling and its applications.

“I’d been pondering this move for some time and, after considerable discussions with Heimatec GmbH, Tecnicrafts Industries, Henninger GmbH, and other principals we represent, it seemed time to make this decision and move forward with the new company,” says Hansen. “The new company will enable us to serve our existing and new market opportunities in a more pro-active fashion.”

Hansen cites the recent expansion of the Chicago area facility, with added office and warehouse space, will allow more staff to be hired and greater inventories to be carried on all lines represented by the new company. The Heimatec products will continue to be the company’s main focus with full commitment to the Tecnicrafts and the other product lines.

According to Hansen, other developments in the works include additional lines of machine tool accessories and related machine components. Throughout the years the company has been adding various other brand names to its roster, most recently the guide bushing and collet line from Tecnicrafts Industries, producers of products made specifically for the Swiss machine tool market. Platinum Tooling will make a further investment to this line with extensive inventory and the purchase and installation of a grinding machine

“Bringing this process in house will improve delivery times and strengthen market position,” Hansen says.

Additional personnel and sales representative firms are being sought to augment the existing team.

Hansen notes that, “nothing will change in our interaction with current customers, reps and distributors. We’ll be enhancing our capabilities, however, with more application engineering, service technicians and staff dedicated to the specific tooling lines we represent. In that way, our value proposition and overall service package to the industry will rise to new heights.”

Tsugami/Rem Sales, the exclusive North American importer of Precision Tsugami machine tools, will host the third annual Technology Center Open House in Fullerton, California, Dec. 4-5, 2018 at the Tsugami/Rem Sales office, located at 1521 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Suite E, Fullerton, California.

The two-day event will consist of presentations by Scott Anthony, business unit manager at Tsugami/Rem Sales and Graham Immerman, Director of sales and marketing at MachineMetrics. Anthony will present on Tsugami/Rem Sales’ latest technology including the new SmartFlex Guide Bushing system for 32mm platforms, Oscillation Cutting, and the Goltenbodt quick-change tooling system. Immerman will present on the MachineMetrics platform and the benefits that big data brings to machining.

“MachineMetrics is excited and honored to share our best-in-class machine monitoring and manufacturing analytics software at this year's Fullerton Open House. For years now we have been working directly with manufacturers and machine builders to improve manufacturing equipment uptime, OEE, and productivity with real-time data and analytics. Together with Tsugami/Rem Sales, our data science team is working closely with the data to deliver optimized preventative and predictive maintenance specific to Tsugami machines. By allowing machines to be monitored remotely and in real-time with our IIoT technology, MachineMetrics is excited to enable Tsugami/Rem Sales and their customers the ability to optimize their machine performance and make confident decisions driven by data," Immerman says.

The following industry partners will be showcased at the Fullerton Open House; ESPRIT CAM Software, Blaser Swisslube, Mesa Tooling, and Eagle Vision and Automation. Tsugami/Rem Sales also welcomes a representative from the Wounded Warrior Project to be present at the event to answer questions about the recent Corporate Sponsorship which was proudly announced at IMTS 2018.

“We look forward to the Fullerton Open House each year; it is a wonderful time for our team to showcase our latest in machine tool technology to Southern California and the surrounding areas. This year, we are especially excited to show the new SS38MH-5AX and the M08J as well as our latest partnership with MachineMetrics and sponsorship of the Wounded Warrior Project,” notes Michael Mugno, vice president, Tsugami/Rem Sales, LLC. “We pride ourselves in the engineering and customer support behind Rem Sales’ products and partnerships and look forward to welcoming all of the open house attendees.”

Hours for the Fullerton Open House are, Tue., Dec. 4, 10:00am PT-4:00pm PT and Wed., Dec. 5, 10:00am PT-3:00pm PT. Lunch will be supplied for all registrants both days.

All attendees will have the opportunity to meet with Tsugami/Rem Sales’ Swiss CNC engineers and local Tsugami specialists. All are encouraged to bring questions, ideas, and drawings of parts for consultation sessions. Representatives from Tsugami West Coast distributor and industry partner, Ellison Technologies will also be available during the event. Ellison Technologies is located in Santa Fe Springs, Califiornia, and can be contacted by phone at 562.949.8311.